if you were a baseball fan would you root for the cleveland indians? they are my favorite baseball team and are headed to the playoffs, this is the team that was prominately featured in the movies major league 1 and 2.

I love Major League Baseball. I'm rooting for the Indians in the designated hitter league, the Cubs in the National League.

Any national league team to win the Series. But if Cleveland won, that would be OK. No Yankees or Red Sox.

I really really don't get baseball.

The only Stephen King piece I have not been able to finish was a long account of his son's little league team's progress during one year (I think). Every other sentence in it was meaningless to me.

I remember rounders at school - what we played when the good cricketers were playing - and that's how I think of it.

PG Wodehouse apparently got to like baseball more than cricket after 30 years in the US, so it must have something.

the marlins i'd support [who are rubbish]

I'm a Florida Marlins fan. We had season tickets there for the 4 years we lived in Miami. Although they won the world series in 2003 they are generally known for being a bit rubbish and low attendances (though getting a proper baseball stadium will help that, if they and MLB ever manage to work their way through the network of corruption that is South Florida). We moved up to NJ earlier this year where everyone is a brash, know-it-all Mets or Yankees fan. When you tell them you support the Marlins they look at you like you just stepped off a spaceship.

After moving to the US, I got to love baseball very quickly. As long as any NL team wins, then I'm happy. I don't enjoy the AL as much - the designated hitter rule destroys any semblance of strategy and skill in managing the game.

I'm a Marlins fan too, but just this week while they are playing the Cubs. :devil2: See, my team is the Brewers and they need all the help they can get to catch the Cubs and make it into the playoffs. The Marlins did their part last night and beat the Cubs so right now the Brewers are 2 games out with only 5 more to be played.

Hey Cubs, remember the CURSE, remember the CURSE!!!!

As far as the AL goes, I'll be rooting for fallchase's Indians..............

My sentiments exactly about the designated hitter league. I hate that rule, it is an abomination, it is anti-baseball.

What is up with the lack of attendance at Marlins games? Heck, even the Expos used to draw more than that and they always sucked.

Aubs, a lot of people in the States don't relate to baseball either. They think it's too slow--- the slowness is part of it, the strategy with every single pitch, every single situation in every pitch count is different. It also echoes a time when a lot of things were better, though not everything of course.

For the most part, you fall in love with baseball as a kid. When you do, you realize it is a perfect game-- except for steroids and designated hitters. :rant:

odlwyer is right--true love of baseball is by no means universal in the US. I think you have to be familiar with the talents and tendencies of key players and to appreciate statistics, odds and strategy to develop a deep love of the game.

I don't have a favorite team (I find it hard to identify with a team unless they play in my hometown), but being an Ohioan and knowing how much Cleveland sprts fans have suffered over the years, I am pulling for the Tribe. I'll also root for any of the teams that aren't from NYC or Boston.

Wow - where to begin on this question... Just mix and match any combination of the following popular theories;

1) Young franchise. Lots of kids in S FL support them, but their parents don't.
2) Firesales of 98 and 05, right after WS wins
3) Open air stadium and it's just too hot and humid every day in the summer, plus it always looks like it's going to pour down, so why risk thinking you're going to the game.
4) Stadium is in the middle of nowhere, in a 'hood' between Miami and Ft Lauderdale and pretty difficult to get to from anywhere for a 7pm start and you absolutely need a car to get there.
5) There is absolutely nothing else to do around the stadium, which is surrounded by wasteland and dodgy neighbourhoods(see above)
6) Zero walk-up crowd potential due to location of stadium
7) Stadium is not configured for baseball, so in many seats you have to crane your neck to see the action.
8) Too much else going in in Miami that's competing for the 'entertainment dollar'
9) Miami is the most poverty-stricken big city in the USA. Most baseball fans are too poor to go.
10) The lease deal on the stadium prevents the Marlins from marketing suites and tickets to the top 200 S FL companies. The Dolphins have exclusive rights to them.
11) No-one in S FL is actually from S FL, so they support other teams or come from countries who don't really care for baseball.
12) Local media is just Dolphin obsessed and anti-Marlin. Even though they've won fuck all for years, local sports radio and papers would rather talk about the Dolphins all summer and who the 5th string tight end might be when the season actually starts.

There are many more, but they're the main ones. For me, it mainly boils down to a shitty stadium in a shitty location. It's actually not much fun going to a game. If they don't get a stadium built in the next 2-3 years they'll be gone. MLB are trying to push it, but the local politicos, contractors and mafias (read: Huizinga) are so corrupt down there it's almost impossible to get anything of the scale of a baseball stadium built without lining a lot of pockets...

It's hard to imagine a team that has one 2 World Series in the last decade can be in such a bad way. A shame.

I'm an Astros fan. The Astros got to the World Series once in over 40 years. And got swept. But people still go in droves to an air-conditioned baseball field!

Baseball is just playing Rounder's with Fancy Uniforms and Hats.

What is Rounder's?

It's the same Game as Baseball but without all the Fussin about.

Kid's play it at school.

does jandek ever do the national anthem at astros games?

He used to. He got tired of all the adulation.

He looks like more of a Rockets man anyway. Lean and lanky. I bet he's got a decent jumpshot and can grab the occasional board for you. Mind you, I'm sure he can't play the point the way wild man fischer could back in the day, but that's a whole other story.

I saw my first professional baseball game at the Astrodome in 1982. A group of us went down to visit a friend from high school that had moved down to Galveston. I don't remember much about the game but I do recall buying one of those Astro's hats that looked like a stack of pancakes (no idea where it is now). It was back when the Astros had the multi-colored striped "rainbow" uniforms. Man, those things were ugly!

That's when their rotation included Ryan, Niekro and Sutton. Any idea who started the game you saw? Jose Cruz was in the out field for them then too. He was a fave of me and my friends, and we all wore wrist bands way up on our arms like him when we played street ball.

Rounders is mainly a girl's game, I think (though when we played Softball it seemed to have exactly the same rules as Rounders, but with a bigger ball) - like English football is in the US.

I noticed a baseball joke in King of the Hill last week, implying that it isn't highly thought of in Texas at least.

Baseball not as highly thought of as football, that's correct. Joe Sixpack prefers to watch absurdly fast and large locker room mutants smash full force into each other and chase a hog bladder around and "penetrate" each other's "territory." It's that troop surge, warfare element he loves as he sits out of harm's way on his fat Amurrrrican couch and cheers for blood.

Well Chase, I probably would root for the Indians, especially over the Red Sox and Yankees, but not at the expense of my team, the New York Mets. However, at the rate they're going, the Mets may not even make the playoffs, and with yet another big lead thrown away tonight against the Nationals, the aggravation mounts for us all.... :lol:



Why does an Oregonian root for the Mets? Because Tom Seaver was my fave player as a kid, and because Bud Selig somehow managed to smuggle the Pilots out of Seattle to become the Milwaukee Brewers. I do have the cable baseball package so that I can see almost every Met game, it's nice that the games are usually over by 7 pm west coast time so that I can do other things in the evening.



I also have a friend I work with from Ohio who is HUGE Indians fan, so that's another reason to root for the Tribe.


Oh I forgot, about the only Red Sox I want to see do well is that rookie outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, who is a good local kid, I saw him play a couple of times when he was in college.

in the national league i am rooting for the brewers and the mets, i cant stand the yankees, and i hate the marlins cause they beat the indians in the 97 world series no offense marlins fans, but i enjoy the brewers cause they have a cool name and ryan braun plays for them, and the mets cause they are just cool.

I think my father saw Sandy Koufax pitch (as the visiting pitcher) at the Dome the year it opened.

As far as the Indians go, I have to admit that I am a Duane Kuiper fan.

I can't believe the Brewers are considered Nat'l League. Part of the reason I don't really follow baseball anymore.

I used to fall asleep every night listening to Mets game on transistor radio. Del Unser, Tom Seaver, Dave Kingman, Joe Torre daze.

Softball/rounders uses an underarm pitch - that being the only major difference. Plenty of adult men and women play it here, and in fact there is an International Softball tournament - men's and women's - held every couple-or-four years to which the US and Canada send teams. NZ has won the men's tournament on a number of occassions.

I'm not sure who pitched and can't even say for certain who the Astros played (I think it was the Dodgers). We were 6 high school kids from the woods of WI taking in our first professional game and we were more interested in the environment than the game. We did have fun.

CT, I'm glad the Brewers moved to the NL. I think the Cardinals and Cubs make much better rivals for them than the Indians and White Sox did.

The Brewers missed out on a chance to move to within a game of the Cubs last night. :angry:

Go Cubs! :P

But the Brew Crew have 2 things going for them: 1) named after beer; 2) sausage races.

I've just come back from a holiday to New York and Boston. The New York section tied in with the Yankees v Baltimore. So we got tickets.

I didn't really understand the rules until the game started but picked them up very quickly. I thought it was really good. Didn't finish until 11pm!

It doesn't sem to have the subtleties of cricket but that is forgiveable (for instance there only seems to be three types of delivery - sorry, pitch. The field placings appear to lack variation). As it happens the fielding by both teams seemed flawless to me - I didn't realise how little chance the batters have if they don't put the ball into orbit.

However, I am at a loss to grasp this National League and American League thing, and this designated hitter wheeze. If the NL and the AL play by different rules, then what rules are used when teams from the different competitions meet?

They play by the home team's rules. Weird, I know.

First game I saw was in Ebbets Field in '53...was a huge Brooklyn Dodgers fan and when O'Malley took them to LA I lost my taste for watching. Still play hardball when I get the chance[played Tuesday] but since the factories closed & the Hispanics moved away, there's little chance for a real pickup game anymore.
When I was in my middle teems I was a pretty good fast-pitch softball player. Not a speed ball pitcher though....Eddie Feigner was once clocked with a radar gun at 105 mph...try hitting THAT from 50 feet away....some guys, and a few women too, could really pitch as fast as a pro hardballer.
I had to play the outfield in hardball[baseball] because grounders chewed me up...didn't have much range but could throw the ball nearly 350'....hitting was the only thing that kept me in the game....
I agree with the poster who complained about the time....50+ years ago it was very rare for a game to last two hours, thirty minutes-- usually a little over two hours...now, it's 3 - 4 hours for a televised game....There used to be a lot of semi-pro leagues where you could make a few dollars playing....it wasn't Organized Baseball - the monopoly - so a good player could occasionally make some money by getting a signing bonus....If I go to a game these days it's the Appalachian League, an OB rookie league staffed with 17 - 22 year olds trying to make it to the majors...see some good ball & see some mistakes an 8 year old wouldn't have made years ago... Just hitting fungoes is a lot of fun and it only takes two people and you get more exercise than playing a regular game....baseball's OK; fast pitch softball is a better game to me....association football is probably the best; the other sports, except the obvious one, don't even register on my personal radar....

3 hours odd is the shortest version of cricket. After watching a test match it can seem to go very quickly.

In the late 19th century and first decades of the 20th century, a professional baseball game would average two hours...

Are TV and pitching changes the main reasons for the increase in game times?

I would not root for the Indians - I'm a Red Sox fan. (I do however, have a hardback copy of Super Joe Charbonneau's book). Somebody mentioned Jacoby Ellsbury for the Red Sox - I think he's the only actual Indian (Native American) in the majors. My first ever game was 1969 - Baltimore at Seattle (Sick's Stadium - home of the Pilots). But I was born in NH - and went to Jr High School and High School in New England - Yaz, Tiant, Lee, Rice, Lynn, Petrocelli - I cried in '75 and got drunk in '86 - stayed up until 6 am in '04 watching the Series in England.

Yes.

They should eliminate the designated hitter rule, but limit the number of relief pitchers per inning.

Increase in game times: like the man says - TV ads and the great jump in the number of pitchers per game. It takes a long time to get the pitcher out of the game and then have the new pitcher walk the 400 feet from the bullpen[the area where they keep the spare pitchers]l; then it takes a while for the new man to warm up with his practice pitches.
It used to be rare for the batter to leave the batter's box[the area which confines the man hitting] but now every batter exits the batter's box after every pitch.
There's a lot of scratching and rearranging of body parts that goes on here: scintillating stuff.
Ironically, speed has slowed the game down. A runner on any base is at liberty to advance to the next base whenever the whim strikes him; usually this is when the pitcher pitches to the batter; the catcher has to throw 120 feet to second base if the runner is beginning his foray from first base. Since this would be undesirable for the team on defense["in the field"], the pitcher very often throws to first base to either catch the runner so far away he can be tagged out or just to cut down on the distance the runner is away from first base thus making it more difficult for him to "steal" second...also scintillating stuff.
Used to be: the pitcher who began the game ended the game; now, it's commonplace for 3 - 4 pitchers to be employed per team.
Two hour game now a three hour game with no more action moments.
If you can't stay away, bring a book! :D

I've heard that test matches go on for a week or so - how can this be? And does the batsman have all 360 degrees in which to place the ball? It's only 90 degrees in baseball and softball.
Not too many major leaguers have come from New Hampshire have they? Quite a lot from Massachusetts though, esp many years ago.

i am impressed and applaud you on this one.

ebbets field that had to be really cool, i would of love to have seen a game there.

Super Joe? If you really wanna be impressed, to the point of disgust, applaud the incredibly lewd photo of Joe Pepitone, former Cub, at www.rotten.com .

look under "sports"

hey hey, he swung a heavy bat